Inside the Annenberg Challenge Summer 2000

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Summer 2000

Inside this issue Inside the Challenge features recent activities and accomplishments of various Challenge projects. Achievements presented here include positive impacts on students, schools, and systems, as well as progress made by Challenge projects in crossing traditional educational boundaries--of schools and districts, states and universities--to facilitate reform, advance existing knowledge, and inspire new collaborations.

Impacts on Students, Schools & Systems

Building Expertise & New Partnerships

Collaboration Across Projects

"I'm a new parent. Not because my babies are young, but because I recently woke up and stopped letting my kids raise themselves."

-- Parent "Ambassador" to the Detroit Challenge
Impacts on Students, Schools & Systems

In three separate March events, Rural Trust students from all over the country showcased their "real world" skills and learning:

- Five students from Elsa, Texas traveled to Washington, DC to educate policy makers about living conditions in their colonias. The students testified before Congress, met with the White House Deputy Chief of Staff and the congressional Hispanic caucus, held a press conference, and attended the premier of their documentary film, "Children of the Colonias," at the Smithsonian.

- In Kearney, Nebraska, nearly 600 young people and teachers from states as distant as California and Georgia attended the third annual Student Extravaganza, entitled Small Towns, Big Dreams. The two-day conference, entirely planned by students in Nebraska and South Dakota, offered 96 student presentations of ways their school-based projects are reinvigorating their rural communities.

- In Boston, a dozen high school students from Lubec, Maine presented to area university scientists, biotech entrepreneurs, and other high school students and teachers their aquaculture work--including starting a mussel farm, raising trout and salmon, and researching possibilities for enhancing the marketability of sea urchins.

How do you spell 'Accountability'? Too often it's spelled 'Gotcha.'"
-- Judith Rizzo, Deputy Chancellor of Instruction, NYC Board of Education

My respect for teachers increases each time I contemplate the conditions-especially the time and scheduling demands-in which they work."

-- Michael Parsons, Professor, Ohio State University and TETAC mentor

In late May district officials in Philadelphia announced that for the fourth consecutive year, SAT-9 (Stanford Achievement Test-9th Edition) scores for fourth graders in reading, math, and science jumped significantly. Four years ago, only 39 percent of fourth graders tested at or above grade-level; preliminary analysis of this year's scores indicates that 58 percent are now at or above grade-level. The improvement is especially important because these fourth graders are the first students to experience the full benefit of the Children Achieving agenda, including all-day kindergarten.

With funding from the South Florida Annenberg Challenge (SFAC), Ed Venture Charter School, a non-traditional high school that provides hands-on vocational training to emotionally disabled students, has joined with three other area high schools, businesses, and community groups to develop and evaluate innovative teaching strategies and teacher professional development activities. To date, the partnership has provided 275 emotionally disabled and other at-risk students with on-the-job training; 89 have been placed in permanent positions. Additional students are benefiting from the partnership as well; another local high school-one not funded by SFAC-has adopted the Ed Venture model.

By April, students at Chicago's Ruiz Elementary School had read 12,693 books this school year. The year's goal of 17,000 books for the 900 students, 97 percent low-income and 75 percent of whom speak little or no English, breaks down to 20-some books per child.

The Boston Plan for Excellence-Boston Annenberg Challenge released in March its first "issue paper" on hiring practices in Boston Public Schools. The report calls for the teachers' union and the school district to negotiate a contract that allows for an open hiring process, one with decision-making dictated by the needs and priorities of schools rather than the seniority of the applicant.

F.K. Sweet Elementary, a Transforming Education through the Arts (TETAC) partner school in St. Lucie County, Florida, has opened a new Visual Arts facility. Housed in its own building, the space includes an office, two classrooms, ceramics kiln, art library, and student gallery. When the school first joined TETAC, it had just one half-time art teacher who traveled from classroom to classroom, art cart in tow.

"If you can get students to read more books and encourage parents to work with their children on reading at home simply by wearing your pajamas to school, then why not wear them?"

-- James Menconi, Chicago elementary school principal
In recent months the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project (LAAMP) convened policy forums for leaders of School Families in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and their respective School Board member. Participants presented specific recommendations for ways the LAUSD can sustain and expand School Families under its new decentralization plan. Interim LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines has said he will ask the new local superintendents to embrace the concept of School Families, a significant legacy of LAAMP's impact on the LAUSD.

For the second consecutive year, a student from New York Networks for School Renewal is among the winners of the prestigious New York Times college scholarships. Ruben Porras of the Bronx- University Heights High School received a $6000 award for overcoming daunting family challenges en route to academic excellence.

In recent months, the Chicago, Philadelphia, Rural Trust, and Minnesota's Arts for Academic Achievement Challenge projects announced that they had raised their required matching funds, bringing to 12 the number to have done so. As of March 31, 2000, public and private contributions to all projects surpassed $604 million, 93 percent of the total to be raised.

A grant from New York City's Center for Arts Education allows the Career Education Center to incorporate a comprehensive arts program for all 1,200 of its students--16- to 21-year old former drop-outs who are homeless, incarcerated, hospitalized, or housed in group facilities--as they resume their education. In a single year, the passing rate of students taking the GED rose 5 percent. "A part of it is definitely attributable to bringing arts into the academic arena, " the school's principal says.

In May, 120 juniors and seniors from high schools in six area school districts participating in the Houston Annenberg Challenge displayed their work in a juried art show. Chosen by a panel of three artists, 25 student winners in various categories received scholarships ranging from $500 to $5,000 each. Winning artwork was auctioned to support the scholarship program.

In Chattanooga, student performance has improved since the formerly separate county and city school districts united to form a new one. In 1994-95, before the merger and accompanying Challenge-funded standards-based reforms, only 22 percent of fourth graders scored competent or above on the state-wide writing assessment; in 1999, 61 percent did. For eleventh graders, percentages rose from 32 to 65 over the same period. Scores on the ACT college entrance exam also rose in all areas, and attendance rates improved across the board.

As the Challenge winds down in Philadelphia--and despite Superintendent David Hornbeck's surprising announcement in June of his resignation this August--a strong legacy appears ready to take hold. The city's new mayor has taken up the campaign for "Fair Funding" (from Harrisburg) that previously had been waged, amidst considerable controversy, by the Superintendent. In addition, following Hornbeck-s resignation announcement, Mayor John F. Street expressed his resolve to carry on the Children Achieving agenda: "We want to preserve the basic fundamental parts of the system," said Street. "We don't want to start all over."

Building Expertise & New Partnerships

"The Superintendent can leave here proud of the progress made during his tenure. His comments have been piercing, have been challenging, but he has raised the bar on what our expectations should be of ourselves and of our schools. Even in the face of withering criticism, he's always said that children can learn, children will learn, given the appropriate environment in which to do so."

-- Philadelphia Mayor John Street on the news of David Hornbeck's resignation
The Challenge in Detroit has joined with the Detroit Urban League and Detroit Public Schools to launch a major campaign to improve student learning called Achievement Matters. Patterned after a program of the National Urban League, the initiative aims to increase reading proficiency among middle schoolers and to expand parental involvement, particularly in middle and high schools. One hundred area corporate leaders, human service agencies, and community groups have signed on to support the effort.

Between March and May, the Houston Annenberg Challenge held its second Peer Review Process. Four-member teams of educators and community representatives visited 11 Beacon schools and 20 Lamplighter Learning Communities (representing 65 schools) to assess the school's progress in improving student achievement and implementing the three imperatives of the Annenberg reform work--increased teacher professional development, reduced class size, and reduced teacher isolation.

New York Networks will be working in collaboration with researchers at NYU, the Board of Education, and educators throughout the city to create a user-friendly manual for parents, teachers, and others interested in starting a new school program in New York City.

In March, the Rural School and Community Trust held its second annual Stewardship Institute in Callaway Gardens, Georgia. One hundred teachers, curriculum directors, and others responsible for assessment attended the three-day conference dedicated to "Meeting and Exceeding State Standards through Place Based Learning."

In March, LAAMP hosted Technology Conference 2000 for 350 educators and community members from all 28 of its School Families. Teachers and students with extensive experience integrating technology across the curriculum demonstrated their work with electronic and web-based portfolios, home-to-school connections, technology-infused lesson plans, and inquiry-based projects.

Minnesota's Arts for Academic Achievement held its second Urban Retreat for the Arts in June. Over 300 teachers and artists attended 90 conference workshops designed to help integrate curriculum in and through the arts.

Early this year, the South Florida Annenberg Challenge announced a new partnership with The Barbara Bush Foundation. Called The Governor's Family Literacy Initiative for Florida, the $1 million effort aims to enhance family literacy by providing reading instruction to both children and parents while also stressing the importance of family members reading together at home

"Education reform in Detroit has lost one of its strongest and most effective leaders. And our students will be at risk because of Bill Beckham's untimely passing."

-- Detroit Interim Superintendent David Adamany

"At the end of the evening, all the [Annenberg] coordinators stood and applauded for the longest time. It was as if they would never stop. They were applauding for our director, for themselves, for the arts, for the wonderful year, and for the joy of the evening. . . It was magic."

-- Staff member, Minnesota's Arts for Academic Achievement

Grouped by grade, subject matter, or cluster, teachers in Boston spent 90 minutes every month this year looking together at student work as a means of improving their teaching. The Boston Plan for Excellence-Boston Annenberg Challenge currently is producing a video of these sessions to educate other teachers about the professional benefits of collaborating around student work.

In May, BASRC's fifth annual Collaborative Assembly, What's Working, drew roughly a thousand Bay Area students, teachers, parents, administrators, and reform partners--including staff from the Los Angeles and Salt Lake City Challenge projects. The three-day event featured 85 sessions ranging from a press conference and accountability event to workshops, inquiry groups, keynote speakers, and special forums devoted to equity and high school reform.

In April, the Center for Arts Education launched a public awareness campaign to promote the importance of arts education in New York City public schools. The first of its kind in the city's history, the two-month "4Rs" campaign features placards on subways and buses that call for including the arts among the essentials of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. In a single month, the Center logged 700 calls and 300 hits on the specially-established toll-free number and new website that distribute information and suggestions for action.

In June, teams from each of Salt Lake City's 36 schools gathered for an accountability conference, Celebrating and Collaborating for School Improvement. As part of the day-and-a-half event, each team presented a visual display chronicling the school's successes and obstacles in implementing its reform plan. School teams also discussed one another's progress and shared suggestions for future development.

The Urban Atlanta Coalition Compact's week-long Summer Institute in June provided parents and teachers of member schools exposure to and training in effective strategies for improving achievement among underserved African-American students. Institute sessions focused on four major topics: a whole-school approach to literacy; using data for school improvement; proactive classroom management; and instructional strategies for various student learning styles.

Collaboration Across Projects

In March, communications staff from 16 Challenge projects gathered in Houston to share successful strategies and address common concerns. Prominent national education reporters representing print, radio, and television also made insightful presentations about the education issues most likely to receive coverage within their respective media.

A team of educators from LAAMP's North Hollywood High School visited several NYNSR schools in New York City this spring. The North Hollywood principal appreciated the wide range of possibilities for creating smaller units among large urban schools that he saw in the diversity of the NYNSR schools.

Executive Directors of Challenge projects met in June in Dedham, MA for a two-day retreat on leadership. Guests Wendy Puriefoy, Executive Director of Public Education Network, and Ferdinand Jones, Brown University Emeritus Professor of Psychology, shared their expertise in managing the professional and personal tolls of leading complex organizations dedicated to large-scale change.

Inside the Annenberg Challenge